Europa Perdita - Total War Attila Overhaul

[Hater01]

It's not dead. We're taking it slow, because we don't want to have to redo too much each time a new DLC comes out. Don't expect an update until at least after the Charlemagne DLC. We might delay a bit more after that, depending on whether some new features are added in time.

OK nice , because hm I am sceptical of these big mods.
I saw one when i start with Rome 2 and its not even finished today lol.
These moders sometimes overrated their own skill and time...

[Augustusng]

Updated the OP with some more current information about the mod, including an updated list of team members, features, and credits.

[bobbyr]

Thank you so much for creating a submod-version for FOTE.

The two mods together make for a great gaming experience.

[marseu]

Thank you so much for creating a submod-version for FOTE.

The two mods together make for a great gaming experience.

totally agree

[Miguel_80]

Great work! Very interesting modifications that make the game more realistic and historical.

[blow56]

Too many internal rebellions for the WRE right from the start, even on Easy. I have played other mods and feel better balanced in this regard. Seems there is a great deal of cosmetic change and some economy/diplomacy tinkering, but not much real substance.

[MajorTom]

A great fan of FotE and EP. Here are some observations for 0.3 playing as a somewhat hands-off Western Rome...

First off, I find with the increased scale of border cities that the AI really has to build its army in order to attack. It simply cannot raid and sack, or raid and conquer before you can respond. They either sit back and reinforce, or siege, giving you an option to try to break the siege (fairly historic IMO). In fact, I saw that the ERE managed to build up about 3 full stacks and was raising even more troops, and this was by around turn 10... Never saw the AI do that, kicked the Visigoths out of Thracia! I found that the AI tended to die a bit less.

Money has been reduced a good amount that one actually has to think about what to buy. Build the economy, build religion, build sanitation, or build army. One simply has to choose. The increased border towns and cities help alleviate this problem, as your half armies can probably deal with most single stacks trying to siege a fortified town or major city. Dragging the armies out of the cities helped a bit, but am experiencing (for the WRE) access to about 20% of the seasonally income as per many other mods. I like that the ERE has nearly twice the financial resources as the WRE, but with significantly less territory...

I also love religion, with this mod actually making it something you actually have to think about. Happiness penalties are much greater, meaning that priests are actually useful at trying to quell dissent (what was 20% of 6 worth? But 20% of 24 actually makes a major difference!).

Plague and sanitation is also a very interesting change, I found that I could not afford to spam by turn 2, enough sanitation to completely cover my provinces from disease. Now disease is something you have to live with and actively manage, not cure...

At first I hated the edicts, but now love that I hate them. There simply isn't an edict that I see as something that I brain dead go for, as the consequences for the edicts are extreme, and the benefits are extreme too. One simply has to decide what one can afford to lose, when one simply cannot afford to lose anything!

I enjoyed the edits to the startpos, given that armies can stand on their own. Some further suggestions would be to change up what the starting forces were. As you are very short on money to build new barracks or even to really train new men, the starting solders will probably make up the armies of West-Eastern Empires for the first few years. I saw another mod that edited the armies to represent generally accepted dispositions, with each of the Rome's getting one Palatani army (Stilicho's for the WRE and Vindonius' for the ERE), but I was thinking that all, or most, of the other armies should have Comitatenses, or at least Pseudocomitatenses as their primary starting force. The ERE and WRE were at their 'peaks' so to speak at this point, with their armies with trained Romans. Possibly switching out the Foederatii Lancerii and Numeri with Comitatenses or Pseudocomitatenses would give the WRE and ERE a bit of a better ability to hold off early invasions, as their ability to grow is limited for a while (as the economies are in shambles).

A gripe that I have edited out of my games, which is primarily a vanilla issue, is in regards to local food shortages, but with global food surpluses. In EP, and pretty much all other mods (barring Radius), the Happiness hit for food is massive, indeed, somewhat unmanageable. I would prefer to see the -1 happiness for a local province importing food removed, and changed to a negative growth. People are getting their food, nobody is starving, they get a massive GDP hit, which is a pretty strong penalty IMO. A - happiness when the province and the state is short on food makes loads of sense, people need food and there isn't any. When climate change comes, an already compete disaster gets bigger (at present provinces are almost continually sacked states with the religion and food hit for happiness, even with maximum fertility), as getting state food surpluses will be very rare experiences.

Even after modding away this -1 Happiness I found that I really had to keep armies in the 'rear areas' as I kept on having certain provinces still regularly rising up. In fact, I found rebels to be much more of a problem than the barbarians. I figure that I might just get the religion penalties somewhat under control due to conversions by the time that Climate change happens and sets me back right to square one with happiness (probably even lower).

All and all a very good experience, made me think about everything. Doing something about that happiness penalty due to importing food may help alleviate the situation from impossible to exceptionally difficult.

[Augustusng]

First off, I find with the increased scale of border cities that the AI really has to build its army in order to attack. It simply cannot raid and sack, or raid and conquer before you can respond. They either sit back and reinforce, or siege, giving you an option to try to break the siege (fairly historic IMO). In fact, I saw that the ERE managed to build up about 3 full stacks and was raising even more troops, and this was by around turn 10... Never saw the AI do that, kicked the Visigoths out of Thracia! I found that the AI tended to die a bit less.

Cool, that was the intention! Glad to hear the Romans are surviving longer.

Money has been reduced a good amount that one actually has to think about what to buy. Build the economy, build religion, build sanitation, or build army. One simply has to choose. The increased border towns and cities help alleviate this problem, as your half armies can probably deal with most single stacks trying to siege a fortified town or major city. Dragging the armies out of the cities helped a bit, but am experiencing (for the WRE) access to about 20% of the seasonally income as per many other mods. I like that the ERE has nearly twice the financial resources as the WRE, but with significantly less territory...

Yeah, the economy is a bit tough. I'm actually doing a massive reworking for the next update - removing base income and increasing most building income. I'm just worried this will make the late game too easy. I may release it as a public test pack to see how it plays.

I also love religion, with this mod actually making it something you actually have to think about. Happiness penalties are much greater, meaning that priests are actually useful at trying to quell dissent (what was 20% of 6 worth? But 20% of 24 actually makes a major difference!).

Plague and sanitation is also a very interesting change, I found that I could not afford to spam by turn 2, enough sanitation to completely cover my provinces from disease. Now disease is something you have to live with and actively manage, not cure...

At first I hated the edicts, but now love that I hate them. There simply isn't an edict that I see as something that I brain dead go for, as the consequences for the edicts are extreme, and the benefits are extreme too. One simply has to decide what one can afford to lose, when one simply cannot afford to lose anything!

Yep, the reasoning behind all of that is to make you think more about what you're doing. Good to hear it works.

I enjoyed the edits to the startpos, given that armies can stand on their own. Some further suggestions would be to change up what the starting forces were. As you are very short on money to build new barracks or even to really train new men, the starting solders will probably make up the armies of West-Eastern Empires for the first few years. I saw another mod that edited the armies to represent generally accepted dispositions, with each of the Rome's getting one Palatani army (Stilicho's for the WRE and Vindonius' for the ERE), but I was thinking that all, or most, of the other armies should have Comitatenses, or at least Pseudocomitatenses as their primary starting force. The ERE and WRE were at their 'peaks' so to speak at this point, with their armies with trained Romans. Possibly switching out the Foederatii Lancerii and Numeri with Comitatenses or Pseudocomitatenses would give the WRE and ERE a bit of a better ability to hold off early invasions, as their ability to grow is limited for a while (as the economies are in shambles).

Right, this situation may change with the economic reworking I'm doing. Of course, I think the economy playing with FotE is generally a little easier, or at least it seems like it at the start. The starting units have generally lower upkeep in FotE. Hmmm...

A gripe that I have edited out of my games, which is primarily a vanilla issue, is in regards to local food shortages, but with global food surpluses. In EP, and pretty much all other mods (barring Radius), the Happiness hit for food is massive, indeed, somewhat unmanageable. I would prefer to see the -1 happiness for a local province importing food removed, and changed to a negative growth. People are getting their food, nobody is starving, they get a massive GDP hit, which is a pretty strong penalty IMO. A - happiness when the province and the state is short on food makes loads of sense, people need food and there isn't any. When climate change comes, an already compete disaster gets bigger (at present provinces are almost continually sacked states with the religion and food hit for happiness, even with maximum fertility), as getting state food surpluses will be very rare experiences.

Even after modding away this -1 Happiness I found that I really had to keep armies in the 'rear areas' as I kept on having certain provinces still regularly rising up. In fact, I found rebels to be much more of a problem than the barbarians. I figure that I might just get the religion penalties somewhat under control due to conversions by the time that Climate change happens and sets me back right to square one with happiness (probably even lower).

Okay, that's possible. I may tone down the religious unhappiness a little, as it is quite difficult to manage. The public order numbers are actually close to vanilla, but since there are more religions to manage it gets difficult. And I haven't touched the food shortage penalties yet, but reworking them is definitely an option.

All and all a very good experience, made me think about everything. Doing something about that happiness penalty due to importing food may help alleviate the situation from impossible to exceptionally difficult.

Thanks for the feedback! The biggest difficulty of balancing the starts is making sure that a faction like the ERE is powerful, but still challenging to play, and of course that the small factions aren't impossible either. I may post that economic test pack soon for people to try. I would include it in the main mod, but I'm just not sure how it plays throughout the whole campaign. I'm worried that the late game will be much easier than before.

[Drathmar]

I do think reworking the food penalties should be done, that is actually my main annoyance with Attila overall is that each province has to supply it's own food or is considered short and takes pretty significant PO hits, even if your empire as a whole has a huge surplus. Which makes it really hard to specialize provinces and (especially with what seems like increased good usage in EP, could be wrong though) means you need a significant amount of food production in most provinces. Worse is that instead of it being like it should with fertile provinces producing excess to feed the empire, fertile provinces actually, at least when I did a spreadsheet for my last campaign to figure it out, ended up being most efficient with LESS food buildings than non-fertile provinces because they could support more with less buildings, and because you needed less food buildings you could do with less sanitation buildings leaving more slots for the higher wealth generating buildings.

Also from a different perspective (trying the visigoths and ostrogoths) on the larger garrisons... it makes them much much harder to play. When you settle with the hordes now, the new way the economy works means you take massive hits to public order due to food shortage, and massive hits to wealth (around -2k after taking the 2 towns in dacia as the ostrogoths and repairing them). This means you need to sack and build up a lot more money before you can settle, so you have to stay as a horde much longer, however because of the increased garrisons, it's much harder to sack for money. This, coupled with the fact that raiding is worthless as a horde (since you gain more money just sitting in encampment), it creates a very stagnant strategy when preparing to settle of sitting in an allies territory and hitting end turn over and over until you can build up 50-60k to cover conversion costs/colonization costs (because the huns will have wrecked almost everything where you can settle), and the massive losses until you can build an economy. The last part about being where you can settle, is that as these 2 factions at least, it is much harder to make your way to the traditional settling areas people suggest (Italy, Africa, and Iberia) as, with the ostrogoths at least, every campaign I've tried to move across WRE territory (even as early as turn 5-10) I get hit with 2-3 stacks of troops which generally out-stat me anyway meaning you are pretty much denied from going into roman territory, and you can't move north/east as the huns wreck you, so you end up being forced to move and fight the germanic barbarian kingdoms.

[Augustusng]

Yeah, food is one thing that I haven't edited very much. I did cut that provincial food shortage PO penalty in half though, so it shouldn't be as annoying as in vanilla. I could cut that even further or possibly remove it altogether.

And yeah, horde factions do have a much more difficult time in the early game in EP. You should be able to do well once you get started, but yes, settling down can be a huge hassle. The big factions are generally very strong in EP, so you won't see the Romans crumble nearly as often as in vanilla. It's going to be an uphill battle for sure, trying to settle in Roman territory. Hmmm... I'm actually not sure, but does that diplomatic option work? Where a settled faction can decide to give you a region? It might be worth trying to make peace with the Romans (though I know the CAI isn't great at making peace ), and settling like that. Hm. Could try and think of something to make it a little easier to play a horde faction. Well, I did make a change that should, in theory, reduce the distance that the AI chases you across the campaign map. It could be that change isn't working, or doesn't really help once the AI starts coming after you. I'll try and think of something, but feel free to suggest anything if you have an idea.

[Drathmar]

Yeah, food is one thing that I haven't edited very much. I did cut that provincial food shortage PO penalty in half though, so it shouldn't be as annoying as in vanilla. I could cut that even further or possibly remove it altogether.

And yeah, horde factions do have a much more difficult time in the early game in EP. You should be able to do well once you get started, but yes, settling down can be a huge hassle. The big factions are generally very strong in EP, so you won't see the Romans crumble nearly as often as in vanilla. It's going to be an uphill battle for sure, trying to settle in Roman territory. Hmmm... I'm actually not sure, but does that diplomatic option work? Where a settled faction can decide to give you a region? It might be worth trying to make peace with the Romans (though I know the CAI isn't great at making peace ), and settling like that. Hm. Could try and think of something to make it a little easier to play a horde faction. Well, I did make a change that should, in theory, reduce the distance that the AI chases you across the campaign map. It could be that change isn't working, or doesn't really help once the AI starts coming after you. I'll try and think of something, but feel free to suggest anything if you have an idea.

I have started a new one that is going much better now. Though the huns did chase me from dacia down into the lower part of asia before the east romans destroyed them. That isn't relatively far, but definitely annoying. They actually ended up being pushed from 4 down to the 40's for faction strength for a few turns, then I think they got more stacks from the script because they then immediately shot back up to 4. Also, not sure if there was something changed with the 0.35 test pack, but it seems to be helping vs enroaching on WRE's territory, as with 0.3 almost no one declared war on them, while in this playthrough, every faction in the area is at war with them and hordes are rampaging through their border territories which ties them down enough that they haven't been able to swarm me with multiple stacks yet and me having sacked a couple cities and moved all the way into venetia. Could just be luck on the AI warring with each other though.

As for the gifting region thing, still a horde so can't test it at the moment for giving it to someone else, but it does not show up as an option with neutral factions who have multiple territories, and I have no allies with more than 1 region to ask (though if it should work even with one region it doesn't show up there either). Asking for a region also does not show up as one of the options you can create after selecting peace treaty with a warring faction. That would be a great option though. Not sure how possible it is with modding Attila but changing how likely they are to give it based on how close it is to revolt could be an interesting idea as well (and accepting money for it), so they could kind of give away provinces about to revolt. Especially if it would be possible that they would be much much more likely if you agreed to become their client state / satrapy so it's like they are agreeing to give you land in return for quelling the rebellious populace. Not sure if it's even possible to become another factions client state or satrapy in Attila through modding though.

For me, I don't mind it being harding to sack/take on rome, it's the gameplay that becomes the most efficient as a result, that being find safe territory and hit end turn about 30-40 times until you get the money to resettle. Though as mentioned above, if either the test pack changed it or you get lucky and the barbarians all declare war on WRE that ends up not being as bad.

[Augustusng]

Yeah, there's a pretty significant amount of luck involved in determining which factions declare war on the Romans, and of course which areas of the empire rebel and create those provincial separatist factions. Actually, that's another idea for a horde strategy - you can sack a Roman city and "liberate" the emergent faction there. With any luck, they can join your war with the Romans and help out a bit.

And yeah, I have no idea how that "gifting" mechanic actually works, if it does at all, or if the AI ever uses it. Might be worth looking into.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Hi Augustusng,

As promised, an accounting study on the fields' yields for Sassanids. You must have made big changes between versions 0.3 and 0.35.
My income difference between the versions is 30% (20k in 0.3 and 27k in 0.35).
Besides, Horses and Sheeps are the most profitable buildings ingame. I'm going to demolish all industry and trade buildings to build Stables and Barns in their stead.



Concernign Camels - they are at par with Wheat already at Fertility level 8. With climat change they will get even better compared to Wheat. My empire will eat only camel meat and drink camel milk .

I suspect it's a by-product of your fine-tunning of the economy somewhere in the north?

[Augustusng]

Guess I just gave agricultural buildings too much of an income boost. I gave industry and trade buildings a much bigger boost though. Thanks for the spreadsheet, very useful. I will definitely fine-tune this some more. I'm already going to reduce food and income from horses, and I'll probably reduce agricultural income across the board too... and make camels less useful at higher fertility levels as well.

EDIT: Oh, there is a slight error in your spreadsheet, caused by a mistake on my part. There should be fixed +30 and +40 food production on the level 3 and 4 wheat buildings. That somehow got lost in the files, but it'll be back in for the next version.